


i am, i am, you are

by mutterandmumble



Category: Given (Anime), Given (Manga)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Depression, Introspection, M/M, Mild Angst, Plotless, Post Anime, all sorts of sappy thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:15:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25193761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutterandmumble/pseuds/mutterandmumble
Summary: Uenoyama is- well, Uenoyama is a lot. He’s a lot of things. A lot of things that Mafuyu is not, like rough and punctual and a stickler for detail, like hardworking to a fault and deceptively sweet, but he’s also easy to fluster. Blindingly easy. A prod here or a poke there, a brush of hands or the divulging of some harmless information all can send Uenoyama into a tailspin, rubbing at the back of his neck and looking out the window and pressing his mouth into a thin, straight line.——-or: brief reflections on lunchtime practice sessions, life in the moment, and life in the past
Relationships: Satou Mafuyu/Uenoyama Ritsuka
Comments: 20
Kudos: 122





	i am, i am, you are

**Author's Note:**

> I watched given ages ago and finally got around to writing something for it. This takes place nebulously post anime, after they’ve gotten together
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoy!!

At noon, the school is white-hot. Heated through and through because it’s nearing summer and the sun has taken to lingering high above them, hanging dead center in a sky that hardly looks like a sky because with the heat comes wavery, wobbling air and wavery, wobbling air makes everything look at least a little bit fake. And as Mafuyu tends towards the warmer places of the school building anyways, towards the corner near the window that has sunlight spilt beneath it or the space behind the vent where the warm air comes shooting from between the grates, to him the school is not just white-hot but rather burning _._ It’s a syrupy, comfortable sort of burning, but he’s still wishing that he brought a water bottle or something with him because he has _plans_ today and withering away to nothing in a patch of sunlight is not really the best way to start your day.

He’s in one of his favorite spots- the abandoned stairwell in the east wing of the school, the one with the ripped-up tile on the third step and the peeling laminate along the handrail- and he’s got his guitar clutched tight enough in his hands that his knuckles are starting to go pale. White-hot, so that he can blend into the school as he so often does, white-hot so he has something to distract himself while he waits. He’s meeting up with Uenoyama for another practice session, one of the sort that they’ve had time and time again but are having less now that Mafuyu is really coming into his own as a guitar player. The habit is so ingrained in them though that they’re still on this staircase together once or twice a week, chipping away at some new scale or laying the bare bones of some new lyrics over a new riff Uenoyama’s been trying out. 

They have a routine. Good morning texts, meet each other at the station, go to school together, meet up during lunch- sometimes to practice, sometimes to hang out with their friends, sometimes to cram for a test they both forgot about- and then walk together to band practice after school. It’s repetitive and slow, comforting like the heat, and Mafuyu finds that when he thinks about it (which he does all too much, as there’s some part of his brain that will never be quiet), he’s quite content with the way things have been going. This is a good way to live, he thinks. He wants to keep living like this, wants to keep plodding along with his tentative happiness, even when strange things happen like him being on the stairwell before Uenoyama because he’d been responsible today and made it all the way over without getting distracted once. And now he’s all, all alone, but the air is still and the only sounds are the slow, drawn-out drone of the cicadas outside and the quiet rustle of his uniform as he shifts into a better position, so it’s not that bad. It’s not bad at all. It’s a good environment for waiting anyways.

So he sits on the staircase and dozes off, lets his head loll against the wall as he waits for the telltale thudding of Uenoyama’s footsteps from the landing. It doesn’t take long. He comes puttering down the steps with his own guitar slung over his shoulder. One of his hands is shoved haphazardly in his pocket and his back is slouched in a sweet but misguided attempt at looking cool, but the minute he sees Mafuyu he straightens up and his eyes go wide and panicked. 

He’s nervous, Mafuyu thinks, nervous that Mafuyu had gotten there before him at all even if it was just by a few minutes. Uenoyama is punctual day in and day out, around the clock, something that tends to catch those who don’t know him that well off guard, but Mafuyu- to no one’s surprise at all- is notoriously lax. And Uenoyama is straightforward, linear enough to be predictable, so when he looks at Mafuyu sitting there in their spot  _ before  _ him, his face twists and it’s not difficult at all to figure out what he’s thinking. 

“How long have you been waiting?” Uenoyama asks, voice a little bit harsh but not on purpose. Uenoyama lacks some of the softer edges that Mafuyu’s got, the ones that are half-nature and half-habit, and he’s worried right now so he’s devoting most of his energy to trying to fumble through concern. It’s coming out a little wrong, a little twisted, but he’s trying very hard. Mafuyu likes him very much.

“Not too long,” Mafuyu replies. Vague, yes, the sort of thing a person would say if they  _ were  _ waiting for too long _ ,  _ but every now and then he can’t help himself. Uenoyama is- well, Uenoyama is a lot. He’s a lot of things. A lot of things that Mafuyu is not, like rough and punctual and a stickler for detail, like hardworking to a fault and deceptively sweet, but he’s also easy to fluster. Blindingly easy. A prod here or a poke there, a brush of hands or the divulging of some harmless information all can send Uenoyama into a tailspin, rubbing at the back of his neck and looking out the window and pressing his mouth into a thin, straight line. Currently he looks torn between horrified and annoyed, fond and concerned, and all in all it’s  _ way  _ too many emotions for a situation that doesn’t require them but Uenoyama feels things strongly, and he feels them all at once, and Mafuyu likes Uenoyama so much that he can’t bring himself to care.

“Sorry,” Uenoyama says. His hair is sticking up in the back now from all his nervous movement. It looks like the tail feathers of a duck, and the contrast between that image and Uenoyama’s broad shoulders and stubborn bearing and pinched, disgruntled face is funny enough that Mafuyu bursts out into giggles. 

“It’s fine,” he tells him through the laughter. And then he continues on, as he’s had his fun and they really should get to practicing. “I really, really haven’t been here for too long.” 

Both of those are true so he adds in a smile for good measure- for a proper sense of finality- but that just makes Uenoyama go even redder. He whips his guitar case off of his shoulder in record time and then sits down across from Mafuyu with a  _ thump,  _ flailing a little bit before coughing into his fist and clearing his throat in three great big hacks.

“ALRIGHT,” he bellows, looking absolutely mortified. “LET’S GET STARTED THEN.”

He starts tuning his guitar with fervent, fast motions as Mafuyu watches on, bemused and more than a little endeared. Then Uenoyama looks up again and catches him staring and (as it goes with him) lets his face contort in panic before his brows drop low and he grits out a high-pitched  _ well?  _ that is not half as impatient as Mafuyu thinks it’s supposed to be. But in the interest of preserving what little pride his boyfriend has left, he situates his guitar over his lap anyways and begins the long and arduous process of tuning by ear.

This is another part of their routine, albeit a newer one geared towards making Mafuyu as independent a player as he can become in as short a time as possible. Mafuyu’s found that once he looks beyond the knee-jerk disgust (because tuning is sort of  _ hard,  _ actually), there’s something about going through the motions on this particular spot of the stairwell with  _ this  _ particular person that he finds soothing. It’s a bundle of sensations, all best felt at once; there’s the cool bite of metal in thin lines over his fingertips and the buzz of the string as it vibrates, the low hum in his chest as he instinctively tries to match the pitch and the heat of Uenoyama across from him, who has one leg stretched out far enough that it bumps into Mafuyu’s side. There’s the cicadas again because it’s nearing summer so there’s always,  _ always  _ the cicadas, and there’s the slight staleness of the air, and there’s the dust motes floating past his head in winks of silver-white and the red of the light on the tile and the red of his guitar in his hands. 

There's the warmth, the sun, the window and the sky. There’s the constant feeling in his gut, the sharp and heavy one that likes to tangle in his insides and that he doesn’t yet know how to undo. But running deeper underneath that there’s a little seed of happiness, one of tens of other little seeds of happiness that are all lodged in his throat and are scarier than almost anything he’s ever had to face because there had been a time not too long ago at all where he thought that he’d never feel happy again. But he’s got his routine now, a routine that is good for cultivating happiness-seeds- even the stubborn ones- and he’s living it each and every day. Texting, walking, practicing. Here and there and back again. Constants, like band and his mother and Tama and Akihiko and Haruki and Uenoyama, Uenoyama, Uenoyama. It’s a good way to live, he thinks as he gives the E string one last  _ twang _ , with people he loves and people who love him _.  _ He wants to keep living like this.

“I think we’re good,” Uenoyama says ten seconds later. They spent about two minutes on tuning in total as they always do, because Uenoyama slows down for Mafuyu’s benefit no matter how much he tries to deny it and that makes for some very regular timeframes. “You wanna do some scales?”

Mafuyu nods. They do some scales. He likes to think that he’s been getting good at them.

“You’ve been gettin’ better at those,” Uenoyama admits once they’ve gone through their basics, C major and G major and E minor pentatonic. “Maybe we’ll be able to play something faster in our next show.”

It’s borderline sarcastic, but in the way that Uenoyama is  _ always  _ borderline sarcastic, with enthusiasm boiling close enough to the surface that you can see it if you know where to look. Maybe if they try, and Mafuyu knows where to look, they’ll be able to play something faster at their next show. Maybe the air conditioning will kick in at 12:45 as it does each and every day and maybe it will keep them from melting. Maybe the cicadas will quiet down so Mafuyu can hear himself think. Maybe the happiness in his throat will stick around for a bit, grow bigger and better and lodge down in his chest and root around in his heart. He’d be alright with that, he thinks, with something good making room for itself inside of him. He thinks it’s about time; he thinks that maybe he even  _ deserves  _ it. 

And isn’t  _ that _ something?

“Maybe,” he says, and Uenoyama gives him one of those small smiles that he doesn’t give anyone else, one of the ones that ticks up higher on the left than the right. 

“We’re still going to start with something easy,” Uenoyama says, pulling a few folded sheets of paper from his pocket and smoothing them out. The paper is filled from top to bottom with printed bars and measures in a faded black-green-blue, pen marks and spiked handwriting taking up nearly as much space as the music itself. “To warm up. No point in getting into the more complicated stuff if we’re just gonna hurt ourselves trying.”

Mafuyu decides not to dwell on the fact that Uenoyama keeps sheet music in his pocket, because that seems in line for him. Instead he clutches at the edge of his guitar and nods in affirmation- he does that a lot, because if Uenoyama gets his routines and quirks and tics, then it’s only fair that Mafuyu does too- and then gives one of his own private smiles, one of the bigger one that reaches up to his eyes. If nothing else it spurs Uenoyama into action, has him whipping his head away and down to the music before he attacks the first few measures with a ferocity that’s really not necessary for a song that deals with five repeating chords. 

From the look on his face Uenoyama knows this. From the look on his face Uenoyama is  _ also  _ hoping that they’ll both ignore it out of a silent agreement. Mafuyu will concede this time and every other time like this, because it’s part of their routine; push and pull, fluster and ignore, like counting off a song. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, go.

So they go. Mafuyu follows Uenoyama’s lead, biting at his lip and stumbling through the first few measures of the song. He’s still clumsy in his movements, not half as fluid as Uenoyama but he’s much better than he was when he first started out, first because of his near incessant practice and then because of the sheer amount of  _ effort _ Uenoyama puts into teaching him. It’s been a learning process for the both of them, which is something that Mafuyu likes to think about; there’s comfort in the idea that they’re growing together, that they’re learning from each other. It’s one thing to think you’re making a difference to someone and another thing entirely to see it, one thing to know that you’ve grown important to each other and another thing entirely to effect change to the point of result.

Like this: at the very, very beginning, when Mafuyu was a boy on the staircase holding onto a guitar for dear life and and Uenoyama was living in the half-dead haze of someone who’s burned through most of what they have to give, lessons like this were fraught with little spats and bursts and blisters. Lots of wrong things said at lots of wrong times, lots of misinterpretation and most of it willing. They were a bump in the road followed by a bump in the road followed by a  _ series  _ of bumps in the road that made it as difficult and dangerous to navigate as any one thing could be. But tentative outreach and slow, sure progress has matched them towards their current selves; not to their  _ end, _ because the thing about work is that it’s never quite done, but towards something that they can both be proud to be a part of. They’ve learned, and they’re members of a collective big picture that is nowhere  _ near _ done growing, so as time passes they’ll just become better and better yet. 

But this is more than enough for now, for Mafuyu. When he makes a mistake Uenoyama doesn’t yell at him but rather says  _ No, no like this,  _ and then he shows him the right way to do it and then they do it again and again until it’s written itself into his muscle memory. And Mafuyu likes that; he likes routine, and when they do the same thing over and over like then it becomes routine. They even have a routine for when he picks up things that he shouldn’t. Like this: the fifteenth measure is tricky, and he keeps on making the same mistake, and because he keeps on making the same mistake it’s writing itself into his system. He’s forming a bad habit.

The next time through he makes the same mistake, and Uenoyama stops him. 

“No, no, like  _ this _ ,” he says, with all the unrefined edge of someone still fumbling their way through learning how to teach, and then he lets out a soft grumble from deep inside the center of his chest and reaches out, hand settling lightly on Mafuyu’s own and prodding his fingers into position over the fretboard. That is not routine, but it’s sweet and easier to follow than what they were doing before so maybe it should be. But then Uenoyama’s eyes go wide and his brain catches up and he pulls his hand back like it’s been burned. He’d brushed right over the back of Mafuyu’s hand, and though Mafuyu’s death grip on his guitar faded long ago and with it the discoloration of his knuckles, maybe the heat had remained. The white-hot heat from the white-hot school making him too warm to touch and saving Uenoyama from embarrassing himself yet again by- and oh the  _ horror _ \- showing  _ open affection. _

But awkwardness of the moment aside, and Uenoyama’s impending crisis averted, Mafuyu tries again and he concentrates  _ hard,  _ and lo and behold he gets it right. So Uenoyama makes him do it again and again, first the measure by itself and then the measure when it’s nestled into other measures, and sometimes he messes it up and sometimes he gets it right but Uenoyama is there the whole time, watching as he works it out and offering a tip or two when Mafuyu gets stuck. And once Mafuyu’s played it through fifteen times perfectly he gives him a big smile, one of the private ones again, and for the second time that day Mafuyu can’t help himself. 

He leans in and kisses Uenoyama’s cheek, the soft patch of skin just to the left of his mouth, and then he pulls back and lets his face fall into the sleepy smile he likes when things are quiet like this. Uenoyama goes flushes red just like Mafuyu thought he would, and then he’s stammering and stuttering and looking over his shoulder at nothing over and over again like clockwork, still puffed-up hair making him look like a disgruntled cat. It’s sweet, it’s funny, and it’s so very  _ Uenoyama. _

This is a good way to live, Mafuyu thinks as he laughs behind his hand and Uenoyama’s soul visibly tries to rip itself from his body. This is a good way to live, with good people that he loves and good things that he enjoys and good habits that he’s worked towards maintaining, and he wants to keep living like this. So he will; he’ll keep up all this laughter and practice and loving, all this happiness growing in his stomach and throat and heart, and he’ll keep it up until it becomes routine. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it this far, please consider leaving a comment!! I love hearing from you guys!!


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